


Angle Theory

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221b, TRF/return, refraction & romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-15 09:13:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/525666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock says, “Lone-pairs of electrons behave as if they’re bigger than bonded ones, pushing the geometry in, tightening the angles round the atomic centre, deluding themselves...”</p>
<p>“Sherlock for Chrissakes,” says John, “speak English.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angle Theory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [radialarch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/radialarch/gifts).



> A very happy birthday to [whitefang3927](http://archiveofourown.org/users/whitefang3927/pseuds/whitefang3927), who loves math and the Muse equally.

_“...One hundred thirty nine steps_

_up the hill until the sun is_

_finally caught at the top of the tree..._

_That one tree might make_

_three thousand feet of boards_

_if our hearts could stand_

_the sound of its fall.”—Russell Libby, “Applied Geometry”_

 

“It’s in the nature of the angle to refract,” Sherlock says.

Sherlock says, “Lone-pairs of electrons behave as if they’re bigger than bonded ones, pushing the geometry in, tightening the angles round the atomic centre, deluding themselves...”

“Sherlock for Chrissakes,” says John,”speak English.”  

It hasn’t been that long, John thinks, but the laws are clear: You can love the way that burner-light breaks on the surface of a beaker, your own home optics.  You can love a good fracture (for what it is).  You can tell yourself romance is dead, is bent, that we can love people all we want, tighten the angles round the centre, and we’d still have this same maddening scatter, wouldn’t we, prismatic heart, wouldn’t we?

I’ll tell you what, John says (thinks), grief has its own angle, the angle of a fall, a broken neck; of all the unnatural things I’ve seen the body do, that was the worst.

“You know,” Sherlock says, “when I was gone I thought about particles, and nodes, and waves, but mostly...”

His hands on John’s ears, his elbows, his eyes, two nets in a circle, a molecule, a tetrahedron, a radiance.

“The central angle subtended by two points on a circle is twice the inscribed angle subtended by those points,” Sherlock says.

It’s a trick, the way light bends.

 


End file.
